Sunny bays...

...and the living is easy...

or

 Felix, Georgia, Knightley and Charlie strolling and gleaming in the sun!

Rugs off in March (at least while the sun is out and until the fog rolls back in!) is a good sign - let's hope Spring is sprung...

Hound puppies

Meet the latest Exmoor foxhound puppies to be walked at Rockley :-)  They were born at the beginning of January and we picked them up at the end of last week, but until a couple of days ago they didn't have names, and you can't come on the blog without a name!

We walked their uncle and aunt, Griffin and Goldfinch, in 2008 so it's lovely to have the new generation here to cause havoc.  

The dog puppy, who is now called Daniel (they have "D" names after their father, Draper) is the spitting image of his Uncle Griffin and has his incredibly affectionate temperament.

HIs naughty little sister, Delilah, is a complete minx (belying the cute and innocent photo of her at the top of the blog) and has already fallen into the pond, escaped from the yard and enjoys causing trouble especially with Winston, who views her as a potential partner in crime...

Here Winston is about to show them how to jump the yard gate... 

...and here he is telling her to act nonchalant so they can slope off hunting together...

Bailey and barefoot at breakfast

Bailey Griffiths has now been here 4 weeks, and its time for me to update his photos.  I will add new footage of him shortly.  He arrived straight from box rest and for the first day or so, found the increased movement of being on the tracks tiring but he nevertheless enjoyed having more space and company and has settled in really well. 

Over 4 weeks, his hooves have already started to change.  The top photo is the day he arrived...

....this photo is the day after his shoes were removed, and the lower photo is today. 

Bailey has big changes still to make but his frog is healthier and his heels less under-run and his foot is beginning to function again. 

Frogs can't work in a bar shoe!

I will post more on Bailey soon, but yesterday also saw the barn radio (which is always tuned to radio 2) broadcasting news about Chris Evans becoming interested in barefoot.  Not horses, of course, but fascinating nonetheless...You can find it on the BBC iplayer at 2:11:55 onwards...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01d5nmh

Thanks to Phil Hunter for sending me the relevant snippet specially for the blog, but I can't show it here for some reason, only the link :-(

Something from the weekend

A weekend of contrast at Rockley, with Saturday misty, murky and damp and Sunday glorious - blue sky, birdsong, daffodils and all the other harbingers of spring lined up to make us feel happy :-)

Luckily, though Domino's family came to see him on the wrong day (as far as the weather was concerned),  it was a good day both for him and Georgia, who has known him all her life.

It may sound anthropomorphic, but I often see horses appear to show renewed pride and confidence when they are back in work and get their "old job" back, and Domino is a prime example.

Normally horses don't go into ridden work here within their first 10 days(!), but Georgia was desperate to ride and Dom was desperate to be ridden, so we made an exception and although they didn't go very far, it made them both very happy :-)

You'll have to excuse the sand (? I assume) on the lens of my camera - it was just the point-and-squirt camera that I happened to have in my pocket.  We are also aware that Georgia's stirrups aren't ideal, but there were 3 adults within spitting distance, Dom is an old pro, and next time she will bring proper irons and leathers!

For completeness, here are some quick hoof comparison shots, though as Dom has been here such a short time there is still a lot to do.

How to maintain a healthy hoof

A few of you have asked previously for more info about the tracks at Rockley, how they work and why they are important.

I've posted before about the actual layout...

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2010/09/tracks.html

...why they are important for rehab horses...

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-about-tracks.html

and how the tracks can help horses to self-trim...

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2011/07/celery-and-surfaces.html

but of course that's not the whole story.

 Fundamentally, the tracks are here for 3 reasons, and 3 reasons only.

1 (The most important reason) The tracks provide a supportive but stimulating surface for horses with long term lameness and therefore enable them to be comfortable enough to start moving correctly.

2  The tracks ensure that I can always turn horses out on good surfaces, even when our fields are wet or when grazing is too risky.

3  The tracks encourage free movement and allow horses access to ad lib forage and companions.

They are a lovely resource to have, but what the tracks don't do is create healthy feet all by themselves.  Owners often assume that these surfaces are important for barefoot horses - in fact, they are important only for lame horses with weak feet.

Once horses are sound and back in full work, the tracks are not only unnecessary, but they are no substitute for correct work and miles and miles of exercise. 

And you don't need tracks for that - in fact one of the most important factors in helping a sound horse to grow a fabulous, tough, healthy foot is good, old-fashioned roadwork.  

Its something I always make owners promise to do LOTS of when they get home.  Kate and Storm have been a great advert for how essential continuous work is in restoring and maintaining soundness :-)  As with most things in life, you have to put in the effort to get the benefits!

Of course, there are times when its impossible to do enough mileage - the weather can be icy, roads too dangerous, and sometimes horses or their owners have unplanned time off work.  If that happens, then accept that your horse's hooves will have lost some "fitness" - even if you have the luxury of a track system - and bear that in mind as you start work again, building up steadily and gradually until you are back at the same level as before the break. 

I'll come back to this in future posts, as feet change very quickly when work patterns alter, and both improvements and deteriorations can happen extremely fast. 

Two good vets

I have stories of two good vets for you - I am sure there are more - these are just the ones I came across yesterday :-)

The first is the vet who is responsible for Nico coming here.  He is not Emma's vet but is the veterinary consultant for her insurance company.  When her vet referred Nico here, the insurers hadn't come across Rockley before and so asked him to investigate.  He is an extremely eminent equine specialist, so I was slightly in awe when I received his call but we had a good chat and I emailed him lots of info before Nico came down.

It seemed only polite to send him an update now that Nico is back home but I didn't really expect a response so I was delighted to receive an email from him, not only giving me some helpful advice on how to make the hoof photos more useful for vets in future but also showing real interest in how Nico was doing.

[Since a number of owners have had dealings with a less helpful - and in fact downright unprofessional - insurance company, I will probably devote a future blog to a who's who of the best and worst insurers...]

My second good vet of the day belongs to Cristina and Frankie, who is a Rockley "old boy" who was here 2 years ago.  He has done well since going home but recently went lame.

Cristina duly called out her vet for a full lameness work-up and we were both worried that he would focus on the feet, which historically were the main source of Frankie's problems; its good to be able to report that we were completely wrong.  Unfortunately, Frankie has a suspensory injury - nothing to do with his feet - but of course that isn't much consolation to him or Cristina, so lots of good vibes for them both, please - you guys are so good at that :-)

Big Barefoot Bryan and Sweet Georgia Brown

BBB arrived here just over 4 weeks ago, already out of shoes and with a diagnosis of collateral ligament damage in his LF. 

Here is the troublesome foot on arrival - not bad, but a bit flat and featureless and with a relatively weak frog and slightly under-run heels. Below is the same foot 4 weeks later - improving but with a long way to go before the heels are in the right place and medio-lateral balance is correct. 

His digital cushion and frog have started to improve and work harder; though he isn't yet strong enough to land heel first on a tough surface with this foot, I don't expect it to take him much longer to establish this consistently.

For completeness, here are his lateral shots.  Its nice to see that the nail-holes are growing down even though Bryan isn't in full work yet.

Ironically, its not his front feet which have slowed down his workload so far but his left hind, which may have had a long-standing issue which has been flushed out by him coming out of shoes.  In any event, his owner recalls that he always rested this foot and after he had been moving around the tracks for a while he went quite short on it and blew an abscess at his coronary band at the toe, which in my experience is very unusual. I'm glad to say that he is feeling a lot better and I'm hoping that will be the end of that particular saga, but as you can see in the footage below, he is still off on that leg on a circle.  We only filmed him for a short time, and will avoid tight corners until he is sound on it.



Georgia has also been here just over 4 weeks and - like Bryan - has hind limb as well as front limb problems.  In her case she has DDFT damage to her RF and collateral ligament damage in her LF as well as fibrocartilage damage to the navicular bone.  She has also got an old injury to her extensor tendon on her RH.



When we first filmed Georgia on a circle one of the most noticeable problems, as well as the obvious unlevelness, was the rigidity of her head and neck, which bobbed with each step.  She was very tense and hollow, rushing and lacking any suspension in trot.  While she has a long way to go, she is just beginning to move in a more fluid way.